Step 4: Details

Step 5: Shelves

The movable shelves are simply made from plywood with a 1"x2" front edge glued and screwed on. The shelves need to be 3/4" narrower than the sides to...

For this project, we needed built-in book cases for a long wall. By using pre-drilled melamine laminated boards and pre-built cabinets from the local home store, we were able to build them with a minimum of tools, and get a perfect fit to the room.

Step 1: Materials

The book cases are made from a series of frames - pre-drilled shelf hole melamine on the sides, and 3/4" plywood on the tops and bottoms. All the middle ones have a pre-made cabinet under them, and the leftover space was divided in half, to have a narrower bookshelf on each end to fit the room end-to-end.

The cabinets are pre-built and 36" wide and about 13" deep.

Melamine laminated sides - they are sold as 12" wide, but are actually 11.75" wide. These are pre-drilled with shelf pin holes.

For the most part, they were large enough that they do not move, and I was able to use a shim on the front bottom under the sides in some cases. But, I snuck in a couple L brackets fairly high up to be sure and painted them to match the side of the cabinet and the wall. Those are mostly covered by books and don't stick out.

I am pretty sure I just screwed those in from the sides with drywall screws. I would have pre-drilled the hole and counter-sunk it so it would not split the plywood, and so the screw head would not stick out.

I am not sure about taller pre-drilled melamine. There are hole drilling jigs from stores like Rockler. It may be possible to divide the vertical sides up at the sides of the cabinet, though it might not be as strong - not sure if there is enough cabinet frame to scew in to.

I made a set myself and they turned out great (I'll add pictures). I am having one problem, and that is that some of the longer runs of shelves are beginning to bow. Do you have any suggestions for combating against that? I can't imagine I'm the only one who has encountered this problem.

First of all, nice job, but it's kind of creepy seeing a part of my house in a different context! ;-)

I have not noticed that issue, but only have shelves the width of two cabinets. Did you use plywood or particle board on the shelves? Plywood may be stiffer. In either case, one idea is to use angle aluminum (or a square tube) in the middle of the shelf to stiffen it up - you can paint that to blend in. You could use another board, but with that 3/4" clearance, metal would probably be stiffer. Another idea is two shelf boards together so the whole shelf is 1.5" thick. There may even be stock shelves like that...

The cabinets are upper cabinets - the depth of those is more in line with a bookshelf depth. Since the cabinet boxes are slightly larger than the doors, I did not need any extra clearance on the top and bottom.

I am not sure what you mean on the base proportion - the frames of each unit are the width of the cabinets, and the height of the cabinets was just what I got from the store.

I do not think I did a great job of matching the melamine paint, but since it's all white, it does not show up much unless you get close. Melamine has a texture, but maybe semi-gloss?

Thanks a bunch for sharing this. Haven't yet decided if I'm up for tackling it yet or not though, having a little debate about if this is worth the effort compared to just springing for 3 sets of Ikea bookcases. The pros for Ikea are that they are portable should we decide to rearrange or repaint, have a option for glass doors and can be completed in a afternoon, the pros for this are the full built in look, maximized use of space, durability and some cost savings.

The biggest detriment to this project however is that the pre-fab cabinets only come in 12 inch or 24 inch depths. You used 12 inch uppers, but I'm really wanting a deeper storage space for some oversized books and computer equipment. Ikea options come in 14-16 inch depths.

Ideally I'd like 18 inch cabinets for the bottom run with a stained wood top and 12-14 inch bookcase above it but that's a substantially harder and more expensive undertaking. Still got some head scratching to do.

I wrote the Instructable after I built it, so the pictures are not the best. If you look closely at the picture in the Step 1: Materials section, you can see the 3 brown fixed shelves. One is near the bottom for the cabinet to sit on, and one is right on top of the cabinet. The third one is near the top of the frame. I'll try to label them in that picture.

All three were secured the same way - with drywall screws from the sides. Each frame was made separately, so there was plenty of access to the sides before they were put together. Be sure to pre-drill the holes since you are screwing into the side of plywood and don't want it to split.

I love this project and am going to start it in a few weeks. A lot of people are asking how much it cost. My room is 19.5 feet wide with 9 feet high ceilings, so I am going to use 5 36x30 cabinets and basically all the other materials Carl used and I am estimating about $1200-$1500 with all materials coming from Home Depot. Hope that helps with the answer to that question!

Carls, Thanks so much for sharing this. It looks like exactly what we would like to have in our office/library room in our new house. Did you purchase all the materials for the built-in at homedepot? Would you mind to share the total costs of the material? What is the full length of your built-in on that one wall?

Thanks. Yes, almost everything came from Home Depot. This was a few years ago, so the same products may not be available. I am not sure about the total cost - hundreds, for sure. The length is just over 20 feet. Good Luck!

This is great. I was looking to make something like this for my family room. You said you used 36" cabinets that were 13" deep. I went onto Lowes and Home Depot sites and they only had 12" deep. Did they change how they make them or are there others they aren't showing on their websites?

Thank you for this great idea! I am thinking about installing something similar in my refinished basement. The floor has not yet been installed, so I am trying to decide if I should go ahead and install the bookshelf before or after the floor is installed. By installing the bookshelf first, I i don't have to risk scratching the floor. Any thoughts?

I guess it depends on whether you consider them to be permanent - if so, then maybe do them first. The floor would then not extend under them. I built mine in an existing room, so I built on an existing floor, and as I mention in the Instructable, I worked the new molding around the existing molding to allow these to be removed some day - not that I ever intend to! :-)

however we used regular pine wood planks which we painted and beadboard for backing. I really like your cabinets at bottom however - so practical to be able to hide things you don't want to be out in the open! Great job!

Nice work - that is a huge improvement in the room! I worked around the old molding, but I can't say that was important :-) I also had some low outlets which I moved forward to the new bookshelf baseboard molding, so that worked out well in my case.

Carl - Looks great! I just bought a home that has a perfect space for something like this. I'm a little confused on the base though. I understand that the melamine frames extend from the ceiling to the floor, and that plywood is at the bottom. Is the only thing touching the floor the melamine frames? Also, are the cabinets sitting on the plywood and/or are they fastened to the wall and/or frame? Thanks for posting this, your help will make our 1960s home look like something from this decade!

Thanks - yes, as I built them,only the Melamine sides touch the floor, so the bottom shelf can be set to just the right height for the baseboard molding (molding height + ~1/4" for a reveal). The cabinets are sitting on the bottom shelf, and I am pretty sure I screwed them to the sides from the inside of the cabinets since the frames were all up when I added the cabinets. I used a couple L brackets for the whole thing to hold the top shelves to the wall just to make sure it did not move.

Someone else suggested building a base like you might do for kitchen cabinets - that would probably be fine too.

Haha I was just daydreaming on instructables about all of the things I want to do since we bought a house in June! I didn't realize I already commented on this. Hopefully next summer we will be refinishing the basement (paneling is all warped and icky) then I'll be able to do this. The plan is to put it halfway across the long wall with something like this: http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-stylish-sofa-bed/ built into the other half, they'd connect by having the end table part of that one be built into these shelves. Also, we're planning on making one part of the bottom cabinets stick out farther to hide the sump pump. I will definitely post pictures once I finally get to do this!!

Looks terrific! If you don't mind, could you say the manufacturer of the cabinets? I'm seeing some, but none (so far) that don't have a surface that extends over the sides -- which would naturally preclude the flush side-by-side fit.